


toss-up

by rjosettes



Category: Teen Wolf (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - High School, F/M, Friends to Lovers, Mutual Pining
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-06-05
Updated: 2016-06-05
Packaged: 2018-07-12 09:25:20
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,171
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7096699
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/rjosettes/pseuds/rjosettes
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Derek always shows up for their study hour ten minutes late, dripping wet, and grinning. He gets a pass because of basketball practice last period, but even after ten minutes under the rusty locker room showers, he’s buzzing with physicality, cocky. Three days a week, Kira finds herself struggling to keep her eyes on whatever packet she printed the night before, the possibility that he could walk through the door any moment hanging over her head.</p>
            </blockquote>





	toss-up

Derek always shows up for their study hour ten minutes late, dripping wet, and grinning. He gets a pass because of basketball practice last period, but even after ten minutes under the rusty locker room showers, he’s buzzing with physicality, cocky. Three days a week, Kira finds herself struggling to keep her eyes on whatever packet she printed the night before, the possibility that he could walk through the door any moment hanging over her head. He’s beautiful in a way that’s actively causing a problem with her attention span, and when he takes his seat across from her, she’d say yes to almost anything he could ask.

Except this. “Absolutely not,” she says as firmly as she can, shoving at the palmful of flash cards he’s offering. “I’m not going to help you study The Odyssey! Are you trying to take up both of our spots?”

“It’s literature!” he starts, and Kira does her best impression of the patented Hale eye roll for him to appreciate. Despite the fact that his voice is a little deeper and he actually cares about the team more than the argument, this is the same spiel from freshman year. For a guy who got forced onto the ‘geek squad’ by his mother, he sure did get territorial even then. “We shared Gilgamesh!”

“I hate Gilgamesh. You can have Gilgamesh. You can even have Beowulf! The Iliad and The Odyssey are supposed to be mine!” A baby first year a table down from them visibly jumps, startled, and Kira flushes. “You can’t just say every oral tradition written down is literature,” she finishes, lowering her voice to a reasonable volume. “Or I’m out of a spot.”

Derek frowns, pushing the cards at her again. “No, you aren’t. You know we need you. Even Scott hates philosophy.” The straight face lasts five, ten, nearly fifteen seconds before he loses it, laughter deepening the pink still in his cheeks from all the shower steam. He smells like Irish Spring. “We have a lot of overlap. That’s good, not bad. There’s a reason all of us study whole packets. Don’t pretend you skip the lit questions on those secret university practice printouts.”

Kira doesn’t give him the satisfaction of hearing it out loud. She doesn’t need to, considering Derek had been her opponent in the impromptu lightning round her dad had started on skip day, when there were a scant handful of them in history. “Are you going to back off the religious texts if I share?”

“Guys, really.” Scott deflects the balled-up tournament schedule Boyd tosses toward them, but he’s obviously just as annoyed. “If you study together, you both learn it, and everyone wins. How do you think we got off B team?” He gestures between them, very graphic anatomical worksheet waving back and forth. “Chemistry stuff can really go either way for us. Now I know way more about physics and stuff, and Boyd-”

“Still hates biology,” Boyd finishes. “But I buzzed in twice on language questions last practice round against Beacon County SMSA.”

Derek lets out a soft breath, not quite a sigh, shoulders falling a little from their squared and solid position. “I still can’t believe we beat a magnet.”

“We’re awesome,” Scott reminds him, always more sure of that than the rest of them. “We’ll be even better if you guys work together this weekend before we match against MFHS.”

Kira’s stomach flips a little, waiting for Derek to turn back to her. They hang out all the time here at school, sit together on every car, bus, train, and plane that takes them to their tournaments. There was even that group trip to Disneyland that left her exhausted and curled up against him, the few steps down her front walk chilly after the warm, cozy ride back. It’s just. They haven’t exactly hung out alone. Really alone, like at one of their houses, not just together at an empty table at lunch. Derek’s never asked, and Kira’s too sure that her dad would mortify her to invite him over. She doesn’t even know if he’d say yes.

“Cora’s got some kind of wilderness retreat this weekend,” he says, finally, in the same baffled voice he generally uses when addressing his sister and her interests. “Laura’s driving home, but she might leave us alone. Maybe.”

“You’re sure it’s okay?” Kira asks, worrying at the edges of the plastic protector sheets in her binder. “Your mom won’t mind?”

“My mom will be glad you’re not the basketball team,” Derek teases, snapping the hair tie wrapped around her wrist a couple times until she giggles and squirms away. “Just bring, like.  _ All _ your stuff. No hoarding questions. I’ll even show you all the history tournament stuff I  _ paid for _ .”

* * *

 

“I cannot believe you’re bailing on me for trivia,” Erica moans, throwing her arm over her eyes dramatically. She bends her knees and stomps a few times for extra effect, hair swinging down over the bench’s edge. “Tell me the truth: are you sexually attracted to Alex Trebek?”

Malia mouths ‘who?’ across the table at Kira, lost. “No, I’m not staying home to watch Jeopardy,” Kira says, a little more offended than warranted when Erica mumbles ‘this time’ without peeking at her. “Derek and I have a lot to cover before our actual tournaments start, and this is like, our best weekend.”

Blonde curls go flying, and Kira’s worried Erica’s medication isn’t doing its job until they’re locked eye to eye. “Ooooooh.” Her perfect eyebrows dip and arch in a way that should probably mean something.

“Gross,” Malia grouses, wrinkling her nose first at Erica and then at Kira. “I put my bet on graduation or after so I wouldn’t have to  _ see _ it.”

Erica sticks out her tongue, vicious grin poised and ready. “You’re just mad because he’s the hottest Hale.” 

Kira cuts Malia off mid-objection. “You guys were taking bets on….”

“When you two would bite the bullet and admit you’ve been making googly eyes at each other,” Erica finishes casually. “I tried to get Scott to bet but he wouldn’t bite. Something about it not being very fair for any of us to bet when we could change the outcome.” 

The butterflies in Kira’s stomach have abandoned the light fluttering from before and escalated toward panicked flapping. “You guys, we’re not….it’s not like that. He got really cute, but it’s not….we aren’t….”

Malia snorts. “You can’t even say it.”

“I shouldn’t have to. Derek is my friend.”

“You’re right,” Erica agrees quickly, leaving Kira open-mouthed. “You don’t have to explain anything to us. I’ll even forgive you for skipping out on bargain bin diving.” Her smile is sweet, soft in the way she tries to not to show to anyone else. “And I’m sure you’ll have lots of fun with your  _ friend _ .”

* * *

“Derek’s girlfriend is here!”

Laura stuffs her earbuds back in without missing a beat and slips past Kira, ponytail swaying as she builds to a jog toward the path into the trees. Kira’s left hovering in the door alone for long moments, shifting from foot to foot, before she hears it - heavy thumping down the stairs, feet pounding like someone taking too many stairs at a time. She sees his bare feet first, seconds before his face, red to the tips of his ears.

“Hey,” he says, breathless, gesturing. “Quick, upstairs before mom ambushes us or Peter shows up.”

It’s somehow cleaner in Derek’s room than Kira would’ve imagined - not that she’s imagined it. Trophies from school and sports, pictures of his teams and his family, some that Kira doesn't recognize. His bed is messily made, like he threw the comforter over wrinkled sheets before he ran downstairs. She can see his sneakers peeking out from beneath the frame. 

“You can just spread out,” he tells her, picking things from his desk to add to a sizable pile of folders and notebooks. “Your stuff, I mean. On the bed.” 

It takes fifteen minutes just to situate themselves, even though Derek’s bed is twice the size of Kira’s at home. They wind up on their bellies, papers and flashcards sliding every time they shift their elbows to reach for something new. It’s the closest they can get to a steady surface that holds everything without trying the massive kitchen table. Kira grudgingly puts her own Iliad and Odyssey cards with Derek’s, mixing them into one fat stack of mixed colors and sizes. 

Derek’s not even glancing at them, for all his fussing. “The inner sanctum,” he teases her, opening the folder with page after page of copied and pasted questions in her areas. “How long did it take you to make this?”

“I’ve been collecting questions since fifth grade, when I met my dad’s first team in New York. Beginner packs at first. Before I figured out what I liked. What I was good at. When I get a full new page, I print it out and add it here.” There’s a huge slant toward Eastern religion in the early pages, and she has to flip five pages deep to find her first basic reaches for Greek mythology, Norse, Celtic. Even further to find modern philosophers. It’s taken years. 

“You’re the best of all of us.” It’s not the first time he’s told her. Winning matches is always exhilarating, makes everyone too enthusiastic. “Really. I like to win, Boyd and Scott could team up with Lydia Martin and take over the world. But you care about it. About knowing it, learning it. Stuff most people think is useless.”

“Wow, thanks.” It doesn’t sound so much like a compliment phrased like that, even though Kira’s face has gone hot. “I’m obsessed with a bunch of useless stuff.”

His hand covers hers when they touch - he’s not freakishly tall, but she’s tiny in comparison, small frame and little hands that disappear under Derek’s. “I didn’t mean it like that, I just thought…” He squeezes, hesitant, and pulls away. “Sorry. I’ll shut up, we should study. Gotta cream the Timberwolves.”

“Erica made a bet,” Kira blurts, fingers reaching to touch again, ignoring the sheets sliding off on Derek’s side of the bed.

“On the match? I didn’t know there were bookies handling high school quiz bowl these days.”

“About us. And I know it’s a weird time to be telling you, and it’s probably going to make things feel weird, too, and I wasn’t going to say anything because I thought she was being silly. And Malia. And your sister. And….” She pulls in a shaky breath, biting deep into her bottom lip to steel her nerves. “And me. I thought I was just reading into things. Like always.”

Derek doesn’t say anything. Not for a long time. Kira knows him, the way he measures his words out when things are serious, but her anxious feedback loop of thoughts won’t let her decide that’s what he’s doing now. He grips her hand again, though. Warm and sure, familiar. “Scott told me about the bet.”

“Erica said he didn’t bet,” Kira says cautiously. “That he didn’t think it was fair.”

“Because he thought he could get us together any time he wanted. Yeah. That’s a pretty unfair advantage, when you think about it. Making it seem like good teamwork to hang out alone.”

Kira curls her hand tighter, bracing herself. Like a shot. Like ripping a bandaid off. “But it wasn’t? Good teamwork? This isn’t just…” She trails off, voice tilting up, questioning.

“We sort of could have done this at school,” Derek points out, the hint of a smirk to his smile. The way he looks at girls when he’s flirting in the hall, girls he doesn’t know and girls who don’t know him. Not really. “I liked the idea of being here with you.”

“Where no one could get at all your stuff? Or because we never had before, or-”

Kira sees him leaning in before it happens, enough warning to stop running her mouth before his touches hers. It’s soft. Doesn’t last more than a second. She can still feel it when she’s looking at him again, his furrowing brows and the question waiting on his tongue.

“That was okay,” she reassures him, still clutching his hand. “You don't have to ask. It’s okay to kiss me.” She licks her lips like there’s some trace of him to taste there. “Again. If you want.”

* * *

 

“Next packet, guys, stop fooling around. Two weeks until the first tournament for the year.”

Scott clears his throat, drags his finger down the page. “These high school juniors share only two classes and one extracurricular activity, but they text for the equivalent of twenty-one hours per week. Though both of them show athletic prowess, they’re both most prominently considered nerds by the general student b-”

“Scott, no.”

“I’m sorry, I didn’t hear the buzzer. For ten points, name the black-haired quiz bowl team members who were totally making out before first bell this morning.”

“Scott!”


End file.
